Lawmaker

Afterlife, after the several-hour span of retrieving both Mordin and Garrus, still thrummed and pulsed with life and energy like some massively complex organism. The minute distortions and spasms of the dance floor fueled by the steady stream of intergalactic **** that flowed unabated from the bar and the almost tangible mist of airborne intoxicants, born into the low pre-shield atmosphere on sweat and smoke like a germ cloud of hedonistic excesses. The floor, undulating in time with a piece of music that existed for no greater artistic goal than to make the **** move in an orgiastic flail, was no easier to cross than it had been before. Armored or nude, armed or equally dancing, the walls of the organism squeezed and released around the would-be navigators. If a gunshot or explosion were to rise above the din at that moment and alert all to panic, the only thing which seemed to prevent a horrific crush was the fact that at least half of the dancers seemed too numb, or too far gone, to be spurred to action even by sheer self-preservation.

Still, bludgeoning when they couldn't quietly swim, the trio of Shepard and the pair of Cerberus officers made it to the guard-gated steps at the base of the private overlooking booth. The surly Krogan at the base let them past. When they passed the filter shield that died the music to silence and filtered the floor looking down through a hazy cloud, it struck Shepard that for a single moment it was quiet enough for her to hear the blood rushing in her ears.

"Say, when you guys brought me back, did you guys fix previous damages?" She dryly asked the woman behind her as they climbed to the precipice.

"Not especially. Putting wisdom teeth back in place or re-growing an appendix would be a tremendous amount of work for no real benefit, why?"

"I feel like my hearing is a bit sharper than before, like you undid some of the damage of working with a gun for most of my life."

"Couldn't say, if there were any technicians who worked on you still alive, I'd tell you to ask them. As it is, it's possible. It's also possible that you're having a heightened reaction since you haven't really broken in your nervous system. Or, you could also have just inhaled a little too deeply while we were passing through the cloud. No matter which it is, you might want to visit Chakwas when we get back."

"Especially if it's the third one," Jacob muttered.

One of the guards muttered something and gestured them in, again, only allowing Shepard to make it through. When she crested the steps, the field immediately snapped and shimmered behind her, leaving not even a single word up for chance to be heard. However, when Shepard turned back, she found the Asari woman sitting on the couch of her lounge, eyes shut and breathing deeply. It was only when Shepard approached and stopped at the foot of the table between them that her eyes opened.

"Hello, again." She said flatly.

"Were you resting?"

"No," She scoffed. "I do have a room, you know."

"But you never seem to leave here, from what I gather. Or at least, you don't let yourself be seen elsewhere."

"Yes, but does that strike you as saying more about my not leaving or more about here being where I let myself be seen?"

Shepard didn't respond, letting the silence hang for a moment as the Asari rose and poured them both a tall glass of Elasa.

"We spoke last time of your previous experience with Asari culture, I'd like to ask you some more about that." Aria mused almost to herself.

"So you're not concerned with how I took care of your problems?"

"Absolutely unconcerned. I've already been told the particulars, and even if I hadn't, how you solve the problem matters less than if the problem is solved."

"Seems like your problems were a little more than a few gangs of criminals."

Aria handed Shepard one of the glasses, "So?"

"You're not concerned about bigger interests trying to **** you out of control of Omega?"

Aria shrugged, "Just how it is when you don't have the long dick of Alliance Law in your pocket. I got here by strongarming and longdicking, someday somebody else will come along and long dick their way into the spot I have now. The ones I can scare off with Pirate Queen and Almighty Bitch are easy, for more serious issues I call in favors like you just did for me."

"So I'm your strong arm then?"

"Or my long dick, depends on what you want to be."

"I would prefer to be neither."

Aria raised her eyebrows as she sipped and then set her glass down, "And that's the issue, isn't it?"

"I don't follow."

"Come on Shepard, you're not actually sore about working for Cerberus, you see how important the issue is. You're not even that upset about that thing between your legs, I don't think. Hell, if you just ran with it and started acting like a galactic breeding stud, you'd probably have no issue. The problem is they've got a collar on you and you don't hold the leash."

"What's your point?" Shepard furrowed her eyebrows.

"Ask yourself, if that Ice Queen in the spandex bodysuit kicked the bucket and you got complete control, what would your plan be? Where would you go next?"

Shepard remained silent, Aria didn't wait for a response.

"You'd go and you'd finish her fucking mission for her, just with fewer status reports to some rich dickhead in his penthouse."

"Because the threat they're after is real!"

"And then you'd finish that and go back to how you spent the years following the Citadel attack! Slumming around in a warship taking out odd jobs and getting shunned by the council for your concerns about the reapers. You lost two years, changed on a biological level, but that's just your lot. Go back to the way things were."

"Again, what is your point?"

Aria took a long drag of her drink, then locked Shepard's gaze with intense scrutiny that made her feel like she was being dressed down. "I'm trying to say that that Shepard died two years ago. Trying to keep being her is wasting your time. Shit doesn't work the same way anymore."

"So, what then? Learn to be happy taking orders?"

"If you keep viewing the fact that some space barbie keeps your nuts in a jar as the only thing holding you back from going back to the good old days, you're gonna chase your tail forever. You can want control, power, whatever you call it, whatever rationalizes it for you, but if you want it for the sake of having it, you'll find no shortage of leashes to chafe under."

"I didn't come here for a lecture."

Aria kicked her feet up casually and grinned, "But you did come here. Which means that even if you won't admit it, you're already willing to let your new gift do the thinking for you."

Shepard tried to retort, but the words failed to pass her lips. On some level, she was **** to realize that there was no reason for her to have come back. Aside from of course...

"Come on, cold feet isn't like you, big boy."

"I'm not sure this is a good idea."

Aria scoffed, rolled her eyes, and stood up. "Denying yourself is always going to be a losing effort."

She strode over to Shepard, taking crossing slow steps that waved her hips in a slow arc almost like a lemniscate. When she reached Shepard and pressed a hand softly against the plated armor of the commander's chest, Shepard marveled at how carefully the Asari had previously concealed that she was nearly a full head shorter, even in towering heels. The upward-inclined half-lidded eyes she made up at Mary seemed to cause tangible damage to any resolve against surrendering to her will. It dawned on Shepard that this was likely another tool, like the performative harshness that the asari usually employed, that she had well-honed to get what she wanted. It was also, even when recognized as bait, wholly and irresistibly effective.

"Well, does that armor open, or should we take it off of you?" Came as an almost dusky whisper.

Shepard fumbled with the controls of her armor. Finally, she managed to pop one of her seals. The pressure released from her chest piece, letting her slide out of it. She unfastened the belt, letting the crotch fall away. She started with the boots, but Aria stopped her. Speaking suddenly again with full command and clarity.

"That's enough, I don't care how clean your ass is, it isn't touching my cushions."

She stepped over to Shepard, placing a surprisingly small hand on her neck. Her hand was cool, finding a hot spot where the armor hung heavy, one sore and tender from the load. With her other, she stroked Shepard's cheek. Her eyes started to darken, teasing at the corners of Shepard's mind. Despite the danger, Shepard let her in.

"Ahhh, not the first time you've opened yourself?" She spoke into Shepard's mind, black-on-black eyes not breaking contact with Shepard's. She smiled, disarming despite the abyss where her eyes had been. Shepard felt herself pulled into them, her body getting lighter, aches easing.

Shepard shook her head, she wasn't sure how to work this whole thing like a two-way radio yet.

"Not the first time, but never like this, and never in mutuality." As Aria spoke, her mind and body seemed to disjoint, beginning to move asynchronously. Her body remained pressed close to Shepard, teasing the knots and aches of the commander's shoulders as the mind strode out into the room, glancing out the windows. Shepard took a hesitant step forward, sliding her mind from her body as well with relative ease. She found the room and all of the furniture in it still wholly tangible, making the sensation as if she were in the same space in two different places. Each part feeling wholly their own sensations, some more pronounced than others of each. For the body, the sensations of touch and temperature, the contrast of the personal intense heat and the partner's more gentle but reaffirming warmth, rolled out and oppressed the eyes and ears of the body turning it to nothing but a conduit for the physical. The mind moved lighter, unfettered by the weight of the flesh, but emptier for it. Lost wandering in a weightless land of sights and sounds, centered wholly on the projection of the Asari woman before her, standing near the window by the arm of the couch. When Shepard reached the hand of the mind out to the figure in the window, the face turned to her. The pure black of the eyes no longer an abyss, but now a sheet of unshakable rock in a shifting sea.

"Your form is weak. I don't know if you were a biotic before and never practiced, or if these skills are part of your new body, but these muscles you move now with difficulty are ones a born biotic spends their lives learning. You will be slow, but you can do it."

Shepard stared deeper into her eyes, she could feel the private box peeling away shred by shred, leaving the two of them alone. The space between them shuddered and vanished, the Aria in the mind and the Aria and the room merging for a moment before the one in the room disappeared fully. The room was pitch white, just the two of them, Aria's hands on her face, Shepard's on Aria's waist. Shepard opened her mouth, hearing a hoarse whisper come out. She could make the lips move, pilot the face like she was working a puppet's strings, she made it speak.

"Where... ?"

Aria nodded, leaning in to kiss Shepard. Even as her lips entwined with Shepard's, she spoke. "You're close. You have the burden of learning to speak as an adult. Don't speak, listen."

Shepard felt a hand that wasn't there press against her chest, pushing her backward. When she tried to see it, the room blended toward that of the club box. Seeing the club box pulled her away from Aria's eyes, sending her falling back, snapping into her physical body for a second before Aria yanked her back.

"Focus!"

She tried to picture it as the commander quarters on the old Normandy. It existed as both places at once. She was on the bed of the Normandy, Aria in her lap. She was also in the club, Aria climbing into her seated lap in a several-second-long disconnect from what she saw in the vision. The Aria in her vision unfastened the buckles of her white coat slowly, the Aria in the club following in delayed fashion. With each snap, the coat grew looser. With each snap, Shepard felt the sharp tang of excitement in the vision world, then one seemingly magnitudes stronger in the club.

"I will be quick. Focus on learning these new skills, honing them. It may prove to help you slip your leash. Even if it does not, you may find in them something you wish to return to."

The coat lost the last buckle holding it in place, Shepard could feel the **** strain in her pants in both worlds. The pressure and heat forming a complete unison that overpowered every other impulse. Aria shrugged off the coat, leaving only a skintight leotard and a pair of diving v-crotched pants. She placed Shepard's hands up onto her breasts, tilting her head back. Shepard felt the soft skin through the rough skin-hugging material, nipples hard through the shockingly thin dermis. She felt it again, the previous experience a duller forewarning echo, the reality coming on more intense. She squeezed her hands, the feelings of Aria's soft chest rippling in repetition through a series of experiences. To be acted upon in this state was an echoed bliss. To act was a cacophony that overwhelmed the senses. Shepard looked at the image on the screen, Miranda's frozen face. She looked to the clock, thirty seconds had passed since the freeze. When she bent her fingers to dig them into Aria's breasts, she tracked the relation to the real world. When her fingers did the action, a two-second motion stretched for minutes. It would be a terrible state to experience pain in, hence why the Asari entered into it with great caution. To experience sex in it... Shepard shuddered, the tightness and strain in her crotch were well past overwhelming already. The Asari wormed her torso in Shepard's lap, writhing her chest closer to Shepard's face as she bit her lip. The lights and feelings of the world in the club started to blur and smear, leaving only Shepard and Aria in the mind world. The reflections bounced in her mind, the split forms of the Asari starting to move in a singular arc.

"Focus, don't get lost in it yet."

Shepard nodded, open fish mouth matched by the inability to truly form words in her mind. Aria took this as confirmation she would still be heard.

"W-w-w-w-w," Shepard mouthed.

"The potential is there. You might not ever overpower Miranda, but you might be able to damage her hold on you. Find a biotic. Practice!"

The different realities shivered into alignment, the contact of the mind weakening and time speeding up. Shepard felt some sharp and intense motions as Aria pulled her hands away, setting them onto her thighs. She unfastened the leotard, letting it droop but not fall.

"Are you... helping me?" Shepard grunted in the moments spent in the real world again, Aria's leotard hung, waiting for a hand or gravity to pull it free.

"No, this is the selfish part."

Shepard fell back again, the black of Aria's smiling eyes dropping her again into that pair of experiences. With her hands on Aria's thighs, she watched Aria shuffle her shoulders, dropping the leotard past her blue breasts. The deep purple nipples were hard, in the slow burn of the moment Shepard could make out each raised goosebump on the mottled blue skin, a little closer and she could see each pore. When her hand went back to the soft skin of Aria's exposed chest, both shuddered with drawn-out excitement.

"I would let you take me here and now," Aria whispered, "But we don't have the time for it." Her voice was bittersweet."I want it, find your way back here when your body belongs to you again and let me have it."

The Aria in the club rose, pulling Shepard's collar to make her stand in unison. The Aria in the Normandy remained in her lap, Shepard's clothes seeming to fade from her body. She was dressed in the club, naked in the mind. Aria's melted away as well, their naked bodies pressed intimately while Aria ran her hand down Shepard's clothed torso. She dropped to her knees, hooking her fingers into Shepard's waistband. She pulled Shepard's cock out, letting the waistband of her pants spring back into place beneath her balls. In the Normandy, she rocked her hips, letting the hard member spring up between them as they sat. The Aria in the club pushed Shepard's waist, sitting her back down and crawling between her legs, kissing Shepard's cock. The Aria in the Normandy pressed her chest into Shepard's face, raising her hips and lining her naked pussy with the head of Shepard's cock.

"Have you been with an Asari before?"

Shepard nodded. She wondered for a half-suspended moment what Sha'ira was doing now.

"Then you know to hold on for dear life."

She sank her pussy down onto Shepard's cock, warm skin enfolding the phantom member easily. Aria could do what she wanted in this world, leaving Shepard at her mercy as she clapped her hips down against Shepard's. She gave Mary a moment to adjust, then raised her hips back up. At the moment where nothing but Shepard's head remained buried inside of her, the Aria in the club wrapped her mouth around Shepard's cock and pushed it down her throat. The two Arias moved in intentionally opposite rhythms, one taking in as the other drew out. Shepard was in both places at once, perpetually taken in and let out, never not anticipating the moment of warm engulfment and never not feeling the cool air hit her slick cock as the warm recipient on the other end freed her. In both worlds, Aria's eyes locked against hers without falter, even as she winced with her throat full of cock, lack of air threatening to break the trance. It didn't weaken, there was no end to the wave of mind-numbing pleasure.

A third Aria unrolled as the first two moaned, she held Shepard's head in her lap, stroking her hair with one hand while holding her cock firm in the other. They were somewhere white, somewhere metal, it was like a medical ward. Another and another folded out, stretching in the drawn-out moments into a seemingly infinite number. Shepard was in all of the moments at once, in each Aria was with her. The two unbearable sensations became more than her brain could track. Her body was alive with fire, she was being melted by it. Every single inch of her felt some kind of caress or affection at all points. At all points, the black-on-black of Aria's eyes kept her locked still in place.

"Don't hold back, don't even try."

Somewhere in that infinite pool, the first bubble popped. The single moment of ecstasy rippled through her body, the strength of a single orgasm. Shepard closed her eyes, letting the feeling hit her. The shockwave popped two more bubbles, the strength grew more intense, making Shepard squeeze her eyes shut, toes curling in her suit. The shockwave rolled, growing and exploding outward. The pressure and pleasure only grew in intensity, reducing everything to the white of what she felt and the black of the eyes, still cutting through as she squeezed her own shut. The wave continued, crashing into more worlds, making her balls tighten and spray. She felt herself fraying at the edges, leaving no true Shepard, only the infinite number of her and their Arias. Each second drew on, turning a new Shepard into the prime body, experiencing her orgasm as she pumped her load into Aria, those eyes never looking away. Minutes stretched into what felt like hours, she couldn't think, she was a conduit for feelings. A battery of orgasmic energy, pouring seed into Aria, the black-on-black goading her on. The worlds all shuddered, folding back inward to themselves. The pleasure heightening further with each crash, each moment of experience as a remaining Shepard punctuated by the fleeting peak of the orgasm. In a moment, she was collapsing into Aria's chest, hips entwined and her partner's thighs wrapped around her waist. Then she was lying in bed, Aria pressed against her back, stroking out the last powerful surges and whispering encouragement. As the peak of each passed it crashed into the next indistinguishably, becoming what had always been reality for that Shepard. As the experiences had before doubled exponentially, they halved forcefully little by little until thousands became dozens. They shuddered out one by one, by the end, she was in the club.

Aria's face was between her legs, mouth sunk half-down her shaft. The black-on-black faded, letting Aria look up at Shepard with her normal cutting gaze. Shepard shuddered as she felt a last lazy pulse come spraying out of her, dribbling down Aria's throat. Aria draped her tongue around Shepard's cock toyingly, using her hands to squeeze the base like she was trying to milk the last few drops out. Shepard twitched, feeling Aria get her wish.

Aria slid her throat off of Shepard's cock, standing up and refastening her leotard. A great wet patch had formed between the legs. Judging by how shaky her faux-composure was, she'd had her fun too.

"Don't try to speak," She said, watching Shepard's slick cock shrinking down. "Don't stand either, drink this."

She handed Shepard her glass, Shepard felt the familiar tang of **** on her tongue, it made heat shoot through her body. Every sensation seemed heightened.

"Fuck." She finally managed to sputter.

"Overwhelming?" Aria tried to look smug as she fastened her coat back on, it was hard to pull off with spit and cum caking the area around her mouth.

"Something like that."

"Consider yourself lucky, I usually don't do one and done, but we're pressed for time." She took her drink back from Shepard, savoring it. "Come back without Cerberus in tow and I'll make you forget your name."

She gestured to Shepard's armor, watching with a smirk as Shepard slipped her cock back into her pants and shakingly put on her armor. Any press of fabric against her skin was like a teasing hand.

"I hear Shai'ira makes you make an appointment years in advance." Aria mused, turning the field off.

"Unless you've done something for her lately." Shepard offered back shakily.

"Good lesson in that. Some people are looking for an excuse, others, a way to write it off as dues paid."